Crews remove chunks of ice from the Fond du Lac River to help with flooding concerns in the area, March 14, 2019. PC: Fox 11 Online
FOND DU LAC, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — City and state officials gathered near downtown Fond du Lac Tuesday to talk about a topic all-too-familiar to residents in the North Lincoln neighborhood — flooding.
In 2019, ice jams blocked the nearby Fond du Lac river, sending it spilling over its banks.
Now, the waters have receded.
But efforts to help the city deal with future flooding haven’t stopped.
And part of the reason why Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner Nathan Houdek was visiting Fond du Lac for this year’s Flood Insurance Awareness Week.
“Unfortunately a lot of people didn’t have flood insurance coverage at that time. We really want to use this as an opportunity to highlight the importance of being protected with flood insurance and the amount of damage that can occur from even a little bit of water,” says Houdek.
And it’s not lost on officials that flood insurance isn’t free. That’s why Fond du Lac is part of the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System, one of just 17 communities in Wisconsin in the program.
Houdek says it can save people here up to 40% on annual premiums.
Fond du Lac city manager Joe Moore points to it as another way the city continues to help its residents.
“We’ve said we’re going to go above and beyond to do flood mitigation projects. And one result of that is, people who have flood insurance here in the city pay less for it,” says Moore.
But the help doesn’t stop at flood insurance. Fond du Lac director of public works Paul DeVries says they’re replacing two storm water pump stations with a new one on North Lincoln avenue.
“We’re going to combine them into one. We designed it to double the capacity of the current stations, which were built in the 50s and have outlived their useful life,” says DeVries.
The North Lincoln neighborhood is one of the most flood-prone spots in the whole city.
But it’s not the only one.
The area just to the north of Fruth Field, where Fond du Lac High School plays football, is also another flood-prone spot.
And this is where you can also see another strategy the city has taken to mitigate damage from floods.
Some properties used to stand here in what is now an empty plot of land.
But the city used earmarked funds to purchase these properties once they went on the market after sustaining damage from prior floods.
Now it’s just an empty green space, which can also help to mitigate flood waters and runoff.
Both city and state officials know that it’s not a matter of if another flood will impact Fond du Lac — it’s a matter of when.
And next time, they hope their efforts now will help both the city and residents to recover from it.
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